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Brain Evolution: The Sweet Smell of Success (April 2012)

A good sense of smell may have contributed to the development of certain kinds of social functions in Homo sapiens, according to a new study. Scientists used 3D modeling to reconstruct modern human and Neanderthal brains and discovered that the olfactory areas, which govern smell, are larger in humans. Their models also show that humans have larger temporal lobes, regions related to social behavior. Future studies will explore the possibility of a connection between the olfactory and temporal regions of the brain and the evolution of sophisticated social behavior in humans.

In Safe Hands: My Robot Helper (16.03.2012)

The EU FP7 project CHRIS (Cooperative Human Robot Interaction System FP7 215805) was launched in 2008. The overall goal of the project is to address the fundamental issues which enable safe Human Robot Interaction (HRI). The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, one of the collaborators, has been studying human children, looking for clues in the way that humans learn to co-operate.

Dogs' Clever Minds (10.02.2012)

Dogs and humans have been living together for 15,000 years – a long time to get used to each other. Behavioural biologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig are investigating how well the animals have adapted to humans. They discovered that dogs are frequently better at understanding human gestures than other animal species. For example, dogs understand referential gestures, such as pointing, and realise they can get away with doing something forbidden when their owners just happen to be looking elsewhere.

The Mysterious Hominids from the Denisova Cave (21.12.2011)

Bence Viola from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig discovered the tooth fragments together with Russian colleagues in the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains. Initially, he thought the inconspicuous-looking object was the molar of a cave bear. But when the remaining fragments of the tooth turned up, it became obvious that the researchers had found the tooth of a hominid. It was too large, however, to be from a modern man or Neanderthal. When the researchers finally succeeded in decoding the DNA of the tooth, their suspicion was confirmed: it hailed from a previously unknown early human species living in Asia at least 30,000 years ago.

Bonobos - Chimpanzees' Gentle Cousins (10.11.2011)

Gottfried Hohmann from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is leading a Bonobo research project in the Congo. The researchers' everyday life, far removed from any civilisation, is quite arduous - even getting to the camp is a small adventure. For weeks, they are observing the animals' social and feeding habits. One of the things they want to discover is why bonobo males are less aggressive than male chimpanzees: could it be because the females band together with other females?

The Neandertal in Us (14.07.2010)

The Neandertal, the enigmatic Stone Age man who appears to have vanished without a trace from the earth 30,000 years ago, lives on in modern humans. Each of us carries up to four percent of Neandertal genes. Researchers working with Svante Pääno at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig worked on decoding the Neandertal genome for 20 years and compared it with the Homo sapiens genome. In the process, the researchers explored a series of questions: What does the Neandertal genome divulge about us modern humans, and how do we differ from each other? Which human capacities and characteristics hark back to Stone Age man? Why did our closest relative become extinct? One thing is now certain: the Neandertal and modern man mixed - and we are far more closely related than we previously believed.